


The World Cracked Open

by sweet_poeia



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), American Idol RPF, Kris Allen (Musician)
Genre: Community: kradam_kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-24
Updated: 2011-05-24
Packaged: 2017-10-19 17:58:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweet_poeia/pseuds/sweet_poeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“<i>Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down...and kissed him. And the world cracked open.</i>” ~Agnes De Mille</p><p>After everything is broken open, Kris tries to figure out what to do with the pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Cracked Open

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kradam_kiss. Beta by Susysunflower.

_“Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down...and kissed him. And the world cracked open.” ~Agnes De Mille_

  
The quote was one of dozens painted on his high school English teacher's classroom walls. She was artsy and passionate, and she wanted her walls to be inspiring. This particular quote was directly in front of Kris’s seat, and on many afternoons of his junior year, Kris’s eyes absently followed the spiderweb-elegant curves of the letters while his fingers worked out songs on the imaginary guitar he kept under his desk. For the longest time, they were just words on a wall. But then, unexpectedly, they came tumbling off and slipped into his mind. Once rooted there, tendrils began to unfurl, to reach into tiny crevices and tease mercilessly. _Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down...and kissed him. And the world cracked open._

When he was seventeen, he told Katy he needed a break, that maybe they should try seeing different people. He imagined himself inside an egg, tapping away at the perfectly smooth interior, and he was both terrified and excited to think of what lay just on the other side of the porous shell, so thin that he could see light coming through it, could make out rhythms and feel vibrations. He didn’t tap for long. He curled up, ear against the wall, waiting.

He waited, and he waited, until eventually he was scooped back up by Katy's deft and practical hands, and truth be told, he liked it. There was so much comfort, really, in Katy, so familiar, so...certain. After being told enough times that someone is your ideal match, one is inclined to believe it. “You two belong right on top of the cake!” declared John and Emily, who ought to know. And if Mama Allen cried a lot, well, he was her first son.

Kris kissed his beautiful bride and headed resolutely in the direction of a business degree and a house with extra bedrooms to fill with kids.

He had agreed to go to the audition with Cale and Daniel mostly for the road trip with the guys, for one “last hurrah” before heading back to school and letting go his dream of a life as a musician. When he actually made it through, he had to laugh about it, because, seriously? Katy laughed too, because they knew so many “better singers” who hadn’t gotten to Hollywood week, but she got that gleam in her eyes and started planning out ways he could get votes. She was good at strategy.

Kris figured it would be a short but wild ride, something to tell the grandkids about someday, maybe enough exposure to get him some regular gigs in town.

Later, Kris sometimes wondered if he would be willing to take it all back. If he could turn back time, would he forgo the audition, get the degree, lead that life? Because the thing was, Kris was pretty sure he could have been content. Just like his dad. He would have found meaning, and purpose, and the love he had in that life would have been enough. It would have been.

Idol changed things.

No.

Adam changed things.

Clearly the good choice would be for Kris to say, _yes, I would turn back time and choose to be content, and I would spare Katy’s heart, and Adam’s heart, and my heart. I would spare us all the anguish._

Kris Allen is a good man. But contrary to popular belief, Kris Allen is also a complicated man.

***

The moment Adam smiled at Kris in the hotel lobby, Adam vaporized that damned eggshell and left Kris standing there, all damp feathers and wide eyes.

 _Friends,_ Kris thought. _We can be friends, and this will go away, and Katy and I will continue with our regularly scheduled program. Wife,_ he thought. _I have a wife._ The word held weight enough.

His mistake was allowing himself to think, sometimes, _...but what if I didn’t?_

Adam was action. He was motion, all fluid grace and confidence, and for a time Kris could only pivot in place, dizzy, until his heart began to escape the confines of his motionless body, first through his eyes, then in his music.

In the mansion, it was all innocent affection, until it wasn’t. They were both very good at the casual touch, the easy embrace. They didn’t do anything in private that they weren’t doing on national television. _Transparent_ , Kris thought, as he put his arm around his friend and stated, “I have a crush on Adam.” Adam threw back his head and laughed, and Kris wondered, _what more do I have to do?_

So much chemistry. It was only a matter of time before someone lit a match.

He wanted it to be Adam. He wanted Adam to sweep in and claim and take. Kris was his for the taking, as anyone could see if they bothered to really look. Katy saw. She saw, and stilled, and carefully looked away. Such a determined set to her jaw, Katy. Such a realist.

And Kris knew with an unwavering, crystal certainty that Adam _wanted_. Kris could see it burning in Adam’s eyes.

Still, Adam did not claim.

In their room at night, Kris didn’t really sleep more than Adam did. He was just subtle in his insomnia, retreating inside his head while Adam buzzed with wakefulness. Each thought mostly of the other. Each suspected as much.

On one such secretly sleepless night, the months on the road having made him weary and bold, Kris rose in the dark and made his way blindly to Adam’s bed, and he leaned down (at last, at last) to kiss him. Adam’s lips, so generous, so soft, opened to whisper, “Kris? What are you doing?”

And Kris said, “The simplest thing in the world,” and he laughed as he began to sob.

Adam pulled Kris under the blankets, held him close as he shook, and Adam’s arms were strong. But Kris felt the way Adam’s lips trembled as he kissed the tears from Kris’s face, and he heard the catch in Adam’s breathing. Kris searched for other clues, fingers tracing the angles and planes of Adam’s body and feeling him come to life under his hands. He explored the firm muscles of Adam’s back and shoulders, the sharp lines of his hipbones, the soft curve of his stomach. He mapped Adam’s face with his lips, the brush of stubble on his jaw more arousing than he had known anything could be. He rolled over onto his back, pulling Adam on top of him, pressing his body up against Adam’s insistently.

“Baby. You know we can’t,” Adam said, his voice thick with longing and love and anguish. And Adam held the pieces of Kris’s world together with his own weight, stretched over him like a shadow guardian, and they made it through one more night.

***

Adam asked Kris not to call. He meant it when he said it. Kris called anyway. Adam always answered when he did.

***

After the pictures of Adam and Sauli began to appear, Kris didn’t call anymore. He was too afraid of what he would hear in Adam’s voice. He imagined that Adam was looking at him when he gazed into the camera, his impossible eyes filled with secret messages for Kris. He imagined.

***

Kris wrote. He wrote messages in his songs and painted them on the walls of his world, and some people read them for what they were. Conway tried to look him in the eyes, so he escaped to LA, where he took pains not to be where Adam would be. He couldn’t help noticing that Adam seemed to be doing the same.

When Katy came to LA, she brought Zorro and they played at family. At night, he held her close, buried his face in her cornsilk hair, and thought about luck. “I don’t deserve you,” he whispered.

She left him softly, and it hurt them both more than he could have ever imagined. Sometimes, he thought he hated Adam for meaning more to him than this woman.

***

  
He didn’t go to Adam, because he was broken open, and Adam did not deserve a broken boy. He deserved sunny, confident Sauli, who was whole and true. When Kris prayed these days, he prayed for them to find happiness together.

The world cracked open. Everywhere he looked were fragments. What to do? They were beyond repair, and he didn’t want them whole again anyway; they were meant to be this way. Move them aside, step gingerly over the rubble? In his nightmares he removed his shoes and walked over the pieces, and he felt an exquisite relief when they pierced his tender flesh.

***

Kris heard about the split the same way everyone else did. The sound bite played over and over; it would have been impossible to miss. “We had a great time together. It’s just time for us both to move on, you know? Sauli’s an amazing guy, we’ll always be the best of friends.” And they would, Kris thought. Just like Adam and Brad, and Adam and Drake. Everyone but Adam and Kris, because apparently their relationship didn’t warrant that.

Kris would be lying if he said he didn’t fantasize about making some grand romantic gesture, something epic enough to act as both an apology and a declaration of love. It was all he could think about, really. Something that would blow away the past and give them a clean start.

Perhaps he would have done it, too, if he ever got the chance.

Kris’s doorbell rang at 3:18 a.m. He wasn’t sleeping, anyway. He opened the door to find Adam standing there, suitcase in hand, just off a plane. Adam looked like a man who had made a long journey, but his eyes were luminous as he gazed at Kris, who was rumpled and bleary in an oversized Bowie t-shirt--the one Adam thought he had lost a year ago.

“Adam? What are you doing?” Kris didn’t move, certain that if he did Adam would dissolve into the moonlight, and he knew with everything in him that he would not be able to sustain the loss.

“The simplest thing in the world.” And Adam leaned down and kissed him.

Adam shimmered on the other side of Kris’s tears, but he was solid, as solid and real and present as a man can be.

Bits of glitter and shell, stone and feathers and straw, shards of glass washed smooth by tears...all swirled and settled into a pattern, swirled and settled again. Adam held him close as it began to make sense. Kris shivered when he thought, _kaleidoscope._  



End file.
